The Briefing Room
General Category => Health/Education => Topic started by: PeteS in CA on August 16, 2023, 06:22:43 pm
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Recreational drugs detected in more than 1 in 10 cardiac intensive care patients
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-recreational-drugs-cardiac-intensive-patients.html (https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-recreational-drugs-cardiac-intensive-patients.html)
Recreational drug use may be a factor in a significant proportion of admissions to cardiac intensive care, with various substances detected in 1 in 10 such patients, suggest the findings of a multicentre French study published online in the journal Heart.
Drug use was also associated with significantly poorer outcomes, with users nearly 9 times as likely to die or require emergency intervention as other heart patients while in hospital, and 12 times as likely to do so if they used more than one drug.
Recreational drug use is a known risk factor for cardiovascular incidents, such as a heart attack or abnormal heart rhythm (atrial fibrillation), explain the researchers. An estimated 275 million people around the globe indulged in this activity in 2022, a 22% increase on the figure for 2010, they add.
It sounds like this is an under-studied topic - the association maybe cause-effect in some significant degree, or it may just be an coincidental. I wonder if the politics of decriminalization/legalization of drugs had the side effect (pun intended) of discouraging this sort of study.
Re A-Fib, this can have multiple expressions, from not being noticed, to partial black-outs due to insufficient blood to the brain, to strokes due to the fibrillation causing blood clots that travelled to the brain.